Hong Kong consumer preferences for Japanese beef: Label knowledge and reference point effects

Abstract

The excellent flavor of Wagyu is becoming increasingly popular all over the world. However, the popularity of Wagyu has encouraged competition for authentic Japanese Wagyu, resulting in the appearance of inauthentic Wagyu beef. To ward off this export competition, Japanese Wagyu producers need to improve and differentiate their value-added beef. As hardly any past studies focus on the consumption of Japanese Wagyu in Hong Kong, this paper uses a choice experiment to examine the valuation of beef by Hong Kong consumers in terms of country of origin. Data from 250 Hong Kong consumers obtained through a web questionnaire were used to analyze the beef preferences. In addition to the beef's country of origin, its marbling level, the Japanese Wagyu label and reference point effects were considered. The results indicate that Hong Kong consumers place a significant premium on Japanese Wagyu over Australian or American Wagyu. That premium is greater among consumers who have seen the Japanese Wagyu label. Reference price effects were also statistically confirmed. To promote Japanese Wagyu beef consumption, therefore, it is important to make the consumer aware of the advantages of Japanese Wagyu.

Reference points in consumer choice models: A review and future research agenda

“…A key conclusion of reference price research is that consumers not only consider absolute values of alternative prices in choice decisions, but also compare these prices against Internal Reference Price (IRP) or External Reference Price (ERP) (Mayhew & Winer, 1992). IRP is normally operationalized as weighted (or exponentially smoothed) average of prices paid in previous purchases (Kikushima et al., 2018; Mazumdar & Papatla, 1995) while ERP is expressed as current prices of previously chosen brands (Bell & Lattin, 2000; Klapper et al., 2005). There is a large amount of research on the impact of price and price referent on consumer choice and decisions (for a review, please refer to Lowengart, 2002; Mazumdar et al., 2005).…”

Measuring farmers’ preferences for weather index insurance in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar: a discrete choice experiment approach

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